Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Inauspicious Beginning

So, Monday morning was the Canik TP9v2's inaugural trip to the range to fire the first of two thousand rounds.

I showed up at Indy Arms Co. with the cased pistol, my trusty UpLULA , and a hundred rounds of ammunition: A box of fifty CCI Blazer Brass 115gr full metal jacket rounds and a box of fifty Federal 115gr +P+ 9BPLE jacketed hollow points.

It turned out that the UpLULA was a fortuitous addition to the range gear. While made by Mec-Gar, the feed lips on the Canik's mags were sharp enough to shave with, and getting rounds 16-18 into the mags the first few times took some effort.

We opened the ball with the Blazer Brass, and immediately encountered problems...

Round #1: Failure to eject...

Round #2: Failure to eject...

Round #6: Failure to feed...

Round #15: Failure to feed...

It was shaping up to be a long day.

All told, the gun experienced eighteen total malfunctions in the first fifty rounds, nine each of FTEs and FTFs. The hot +P+ 9BPLE, on the other hand, ran through the entire box without a hitch.

Now, granted, the Blazer Brass is pretty weak tea in the recoil energy department, but I've been using ammo from this lot in my other nines for months. It's the stuff I took to the Langdon class in my M&P 9 and experienced no malfunctions and was shooting in my Glock 35 (with Lone Wolf 9mm barrel) last Tuesday, again with no issues. This is the stuff that's used at IAC as the standard range 9mm ammo. It's weak, but within SAAMI spec.

This Canik seems to come out of the box dramatically oversprung. We'll see if a couple hundred rounds settles the spring in enough to run on normal ammo...

The rear sight, with its vertical post at the bottom of the notch as well as dots on either side of it, makes for a fairly busy sight picture, but the gun shot okay despite that.

The Canik has now fired 100 rounds without cleaning or lubing and has experienced nine failures to eject and nine failures to feed. 1,900 rounds to go..